Review: Humiseva harju

Central Ostrobothnia critic Hannu Björkbacka’s review of the play Humiseva harju (The Humming Ridge), which premiered at the Helsinki City Theatre: “Oona Airola, in her biggest theatrical leading role to date, is the spirit and life of the humming ridge”

The female lead is played by Oona Airola from Kokkola

The stage version of The Humming Ridge at the Helsinki City Theatre is as merciless to our careless times as Emily Brontë’s novel was to the compromises and neglects of its era.

In the final shot of the premiere of The Humming Ridge , Catherine (Oona Airola) and Heathcliff (Markus Järvenpää) hang from the top of a high ridge as if between heaven and earth – in the man’s case, hell. The vision of the stage is an elevated crystallization of the idea beloved by the surrealists in Emily Bronté’s novel, in which the remains of the couple finally blend together in the grave.

But I cried only when little Hindley (Markku Haussila) got his violin back intact. In front of the stage image, I realized the significance of the detail mentioned in passing in the novel.

According to Brontë, we are all born sensitive instruments. If the instrument is smashed along the way, destruction and destruction can be the ruin of several generations.

Under Lauri Maijala’s direction, everyone acts as if in a frenzy. The costumes, the sets, the make-up, the lights and the music are obsessively inspired to serve Brontë’s world. Based on the rich language and imagery of the original work, moors, moors and ponds will be brought to the main stage of the Helsinki City Theatre – everything except the kitchen sink. That’s exactly what the viewer ordered.

The free and self-directed interpretation includes the essential, as well as glimpse of moments from the book in sometimes familiar, sometimes new contexts, condensing the dense narrative of the extensive novel. The hum of the ridge is present and the manors of different pairs are nearby. The primal images are placed in a strong contrast in the screenings, updating the content.

In 1847, the young writer Emily celebrated with her instinctive genius the burning, uncompromising crazy love that burned everything inside and around her. The stage version of 2020 also blames the lazy indifference of our way of life, the ease that sucks people bloodless, makes us weak and characterless.

Cathy loves unconditionally and excessively, but yields to the conventions of her time. By marrying Edgar (Martti Manninen), the girl thinks she can also save the chosen one of her heart, Heathcliff. The man, on the other hand, succumbs to his pride and desire for revenge. Humiliated by his age, the foundling refuses to accept any mercy. “I didn’t break your heart, Cathy, you broke it yourself, and mine at the same time.”

The humming ridge is physical even as a theatre. Already Cathy and Heathcliff’s first meeting as children proceeds as physical touching. It’s full of skin, hands, mouth. Children’s play is comparable to adult lovemaking, where it no longer matters where one ends and the other begins. Cathy is Heathcliff and Heathcliff is Cathy, just as Esko is Crete and Crete is Esko Aleksis Kivilla – or Elio and Oliver in Call Me by Your Name (2017).

The servant Nelly (Leena Rapola), who is used as the narrator of the book, is both an actor and a witness to the events, the only sane person, at least in her own opinion. In his own way, the character is as good and fair a person as old Earnshaw, Cathy’s father (the sturdy Matti Olavi Ranin), or Edgar, for whom the theatrical performance is unreasonably merciless.

Unlike Brontë’s novel, the stage interpretation does not love all its people equally, even though it allows everyone to shine in their own light. Fortunately, the lightly multidimensional Martti Manninen is completely on the side of his character, both in the princely spurt and in genuine feelings for Cathy. When he harshly condemns Isabella’s (Sonja Pajunoja) ill-considered marriage with Heathcliff, the man’s voice breaks down in the middle of the sentence as a sign that the brother fully understands his sister’s unbearable situation.

Markku Haussila embodies Cathy’s older brother, the weak-tempered Hindley. The journey from a childlike firstborn to a young rooster boy in London and a quick fall, to the crawling of a drunkard, is like an open book on stage, and Haussila is like an open wound. The man’s outpouring of screams in a blues song received the only and well-deserved applause of the premiere.

The female actors also sing well. Oona Airola, Vuokko Hovatta and Sonja Pajunoja will perform Brontë’s poems as folk ballads composed by Mikko Helenius. As a pianist, Helenius is often on stage playing.

Hindley’s wife, Francesina Hovatta, embodies the harshness of time. The average age was low, and women in particular were burdened by diseases caused by poor hygiene and often fatal childbirths. Even the dead Frances still follows Hindley from beyond the grave as a sign of the influence of previous generations on the living and the future.

If anyone suspected Heathcliff to be the quintessential romantic man, Isabella will make Pajunoja think again. The collaboration between the actor, the masker and the costume designer shows in a relevant grotesque way the monstrosity of the man, which has been exposed in the text for more than a hundred and fifty years, but often embellished in films and TV series.

I claim, of course erroneously, that Rauno Ahonen’s doctor Kenneth is outwardly based on the cover of Tuomari Nurmio’s Hullu puutarhuri album (1992, designed by Eero Heikkinen). Kenneth’s nursery dead, here with Nelly’s liquor bar. The actor’s interpretation is not hidden under the stunningly gorgeous appearance.

Edgar’s father Linton (Matti Rasila) is a more ambivalent revelation. In an excellent hunting scene, the master’s over-the-top destruction frenzy is compared to the exploitation of nature and waste problems. In the second act, the horse fetishism of the commanding lady seen on the screen is then a cake on top of a cake and an example of the wastefulness of the performance, where not every pheasant or speck shot ends up benefiting the dinner table on stage.

The modernized second act is at its best when it introduces unnecessary devices that make life easier, such as a head-shaped speaker, a robot vacuum cleaner and a fireplace TV. “Living” machines and fixed furniture are excellently used as co-actors. But once a flat-screen TV has been dragged onto the stage, it obviously needs to be used. The video of Cathy as a vampire is an unnecessary addition to the table setting. We already understood.

A vain theatrical play almost ruins the central scene in which a sick and pregnant Cathy meets Heathcliff for the last time. What could have been the culmination of the entire performance is messed up before the climax with a dramatic entrance, gun combat and pyrotechnics.

The large stage with its sides that continue into the darkness nicely outlines the distance between the humming ridge and the Rastaslaakso manor. In parallel, the width of the stage is exploited in handsome scenes where the characters just walk across the stage from one door to another.

I also claim that Markus Järvenpää’s interpretation is the most similar Heathcliff of all time. It leaves Laurence Olivier and Tom Hardy behind. The bold, dark-browed, deep-eyed Heathcliff in the second act is like a character in Brontë’s original work, even in his last moments. “Poor devil, no one has loved him!” A possible descendant of a slave, called a gypsy, is compared to the fate of refugee children in the Mediterranean. The insensitive treatment has turned Heathcliff into a human monster. All sides can be seen in Järvenpää. Liverpool’s foundling child is a lemur, only half male even when young, the same kind of human backbone as Joaquin Phoenix in the film Master (2012).

Oona Airola, in her largest leading role in theatre to date, is the spirit and life of the humming ridge. Young Cathy adapts to the surrounding nature, the girl is a fresh breeze of the moor, unrestrained as mercury. In the second act, the inner warmth has been replaced by external coldness. The flexible woman is also the new Cathy, now just flexible as a riding whip, ready to strike. When we think about what fascinates and excites us about this Humming Ridge, we feel the pulse of Catherine from Airola.

Lauri Maijala’s direction is Cathy & Heathcliff: The Beginning, which is in line with the performance tradition. At the end, there is a reference to the escaped children, the new Cathy and Hareton. But if you want to see how the wounds of the first part are healed, you have to read Emily Brontë’s wise novel. Healing begins with the books that are so much despised in Helsinki’s performance.